Leigh Sales - Detainee 002: The Case of David Hicks

DETAINEE

THE CASE OF
DAVID HICKS

LEIGH SALES

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
mup-info@unimelb.edu.au
www.mup.com.au

First published 2007
Text Leigh Sales 2007
Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2007

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Cover design by Nada Backovic
Text design by Phil Campbell
Typeset by TypeSkill, Victoria
Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, South Australia

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Sales, Leigh.
Detainee 002: the case of David Hicks.

Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 9780522854008 (pbk.).

1. Hicks, David, 1975 . 2. Prisoners Legal status, laws, etc United States. 3. Australians Legal status, laws, etc United States. 4. Detention of persons United States. 5. War on Terrorism, 2001 Prisoners and prisons. 6. Military courts United States. 7. Torture United States. I. Title.

343.730143

ABBREVIATIONS

PROLOGUE

D etainee 002 blindly stumbled from the belly of the plane into the Cuban sun. Blacked-out goggles covered his eyes to prevent him from harming the two crew-cut marines gripping his five-foot-four frame. He was a high-risk prisoner, like all the others on this flight. A blue surgical mask covered his mouth, and gloves were taped to his hands. Headphones muffled his hearing. Over an orange jumpsuit, he wore what the prisoners called a three-piece suita metal belt with chains attached to leg irons and handcuffs. It made Detainee 002 walk awkwardly as the marines led him down the planes rear hatch. The hold reeked of urine, human excrement and body odour. Shackled to the floor and unable to get to the toilet, some of the other accused terrorists had soiled themselves on the 24-hour flight from Afghanistan. With his sight blocked and hearing muted, the intense heat gave Detainee 002 his first hint that he was at his destination. The sun rarely allowed the US military base at Guantanamo Bay to cool below 32C, even in winter, and the prisoners roasted inside their jumpsuits and restraints.

Marines in Humvees surrounded the enormous grey plane and its valuable human cargo. Some were armed with rocket-launchers and others with machine guns. One manned a grenade-launcher. Camouflaged snipers blended into the surrounding hills, and the dull chop of helicopter blades sliced through the air. A gunner hung from a Navy chopper, his sights trained on the prisoners as they shuffled out one by one.

It was January 2002, four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The soldiers on guard at Guantanamo Bay Airport for the maximum-security prisoner transfer from Afghanistan were on extreme alert. They believed the men filing off the plane were conspirators in September 11. The base was humming with jittery energy.

The soldiers bosses back at the Department of Defense in Washington DC were depicting the first planes to Guantanamo as the A reporter asked for detail on the hydraulic-cable incident. That was hyperbole, the general revised.

Just like the soldiers who eyed their every move, the accused terrorists were nervy and tense. Some believed that transfer to the island prison meant they would never be released.

Detainee 002 shuffled along the tarmac to a white bus, bound for his new home, Camp X-ray. He saw nothing through his goggles as the bus first drove onto a ferry that crossed Guantanamo Bay itself and then chugged up a dusty road towards Camp X-rays perimeter. It entered the camp through a 12-foot-high steel fence crowned with barbed wire. Marines armed with M16s and binoculars watched every move from a wooden guard tower with an American flag flapping over-head. The bus finally rattled to a stop near a dozen rows of metal cages. The doors hissed open, and guards led the detainees off one by one, ordering them to kneel on the ground just outside their new cells.

Marines slashed the gloves from Detainee 002 and then pulled off his face mask and goggles. David Hicks, aliases Abu Muslim al Austraili and Muhammed Dawood,

The detainees were not allowed to talk to the inmates in the adjoining cages. Within a few weeks of arrival, the military distributed Korans and the prisoners were allowed to practise their religion. Five times a day, the call to prayer echoed through the desolate camp. Former detainees say the loudspeaker broadcast other messages too. Cooperate and you can go home, one voice boomed; another stated, We know who is telling the truth and who is lying and we can tell. Tell the truth.

The boredom was stultifying. There was nothing to dono sense of time, no distractions, nothing to offer any hope that this was not to be for life. Meals broke the monotony, although they were tasteless and often small.

The name Camp X-ray conveyed the sense of exposure Hicks was experiencing. Halogen floodlights blazed twenty-four hours a day, and a soldier passed by once every minute.

On that first night, as the lights shone into his face and the army boots crunched past constantly, before his comfort items had arrived and before he became the Mouse Hunter, Hicks had nothing to occupy him but his thoughts. His own questionable choices and decisions had led him to Camp X-ray. He had been stripped of his possessions, his dignity and his legal rights, and he was now a number, not a name. To the guards at Guantanamo Bay, he was not merely David Hicks. He was Detainee 002.